The present disclosure is in the area of telecommunications in general but more specifically is a means by which users of telecommunication systems are able to communicate with a (perhaps unknown) user (e.g., a person or an entity), directly and privately, without having to know that user's private identifier but instead are able to communicate with that user by way of a public identifier such as a home address, a car license plate, a seat number in a theater, etc.
As used herein, a public identifier is an identifying label that may be of a permanent or temporary nature, may be exposed to the general view and/or is readily accessible to or shared with members of the community.
Certain prior art systems and methods allow for electronic communications between two entities, such as a Usenet group, a bulletin board system (BBS), an internet chat, etc. However, each of these systems/methods are of the web posting/blog variety where information is posted and anyone that accesses a given post/blog can read and reply to the information. Contrarily, in embodiments of the current disclosure information may be sent to a targeted user(s) and so there is no public posting of information that can be seen by others.
Currently, communication between entities relies on the sending entity having knowledge of the intended receiver's individual (private) identifier—which is typically not widely known or publicly available. For example, when placing a phone call, the calling entity identifies the intended receiver by dialing the unique phone number of that intended receiver. Likewise, when emailing, the transmitting entity identifies the intended receiver by the unique email address of the intended receiver; and when friend requesting someone on Facebook, one needs to know the user ID of the person one wishes to friend. In these examples, the unique (private) IDs of the intended receiver must be known by the transmitter a priori in order for the transmitter to communicate with the intended recipient.
Similarly, to communicate via all types of modern communication systems (e.g. cell phones, email, and social media) one must know the unique ID of the targeted receiver before being able to directly contact them. However, users of modern communication systems tend to keep their unique IDs private—disclosing them only to those they know and keeping them hidden from others. Further, the more popular social media applications (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) support only a single user ID per account—they do not support mapping or aliasing more than one ID to a single account.
Thus, current systems and methods for direct and exclusive electronic communication between two entities require that the transmitting entity be previously aware of a private electronic identifier for the receiving entity, such as, for example, an e-mail address for the receiving entity. Thus, for example, if a first person sees a second person in a car and wishes to electronically communicate with the second person but does not know the second person's e-mail address, the first person cannot send an email to the second person.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods that allow for electronic communication between entities where the private identifier of the receiving entity is not known to the transmitting entity.